I'm headed to Thailand the 2nd of October and I'm curious about the state of the bolts around Railay Bay and Tonsai, as well as all the other bolted routes that have been put up around Phi Phi and Ao Nang...

If Sam Lightner Jr. is out there somewhere and frequents MP, maybe he feels like giving a little update on how the rebolting effort has been going since his stellar book came out... If not, I put it to all of you out there. maybe a few of you have been there and taken a few whippers on some leperous bolts, and since you lived, would like to talk about it.

I was climbing in phi-phi, tonsai and railay in 2009 and a ton of the popular routes had brand new glue in titanium bolts...more solid then you would find at most crags in the US. I can only imagine that more of the routes have been updated since then. Have fun.

I was there for a month in 2010 and pretty much all the routes had new titanium glue ins. You'll still see expansion bolts on a lot of routes right next to the glue ins. Don't clip them! they will probably fail.

The re-bolting effort is an on-going project. I go there every year for the winter and constantly find routes rebolted. It's even hard for the guide books to keep up. Sometimes I clip the old bolts, but I don't trust them--it may be better than nothing. Phi Phi has a whole lot of new bolts. Some of the old routes are really polished, the grade may be harder than in the guide books. The people are great and so is the climbing!